Nokia N97 / 32GB / Sim Free / 5.0 MP / Unlocked Mobile Phone / Black

I receive regular upgrades so I can trial the best possible phone for my business. This phone is excellent. Whilst it lacks some features, it strongly makes up for it in other areas. I especially like the new 'kick out' keyboard, this provides an excellent typing method for things from quick messages, to full blown documents with ease. The keyboard quality far outsells its BlackBerry competitor and doesn't feel cheap and plasticy but rather more elegant. Whilst I like the idea of touch screens to save valuable space, the fold away smooth cut option of the 'kick' out keyboard is excellent, and excels even past some of its more expensive HTC competitors or LG's new Prada II. Whilst the N97 will never hold the symbolic fashion statement currently held by the Apple iPhone it does however made a fashionable stance. The touch screen is excellent, and elegant, however, from what I can tell isn't the 'tempered glass' that the iPhone has, however sensitivity wise you'd struggle to tell the two apart. The angled touch screen provides excellent support to prevent black stops occuring on the screen due a bad typing angle (much like typing with the sun on your screen)

Onto the internal features. 32GB is extremely impressive, and bar the iPhone 3Gs, this phones new main competitor, no other phone offers the mass quantity of storage, and, with MicroSDHC, an easily achievable 48GB ensures this phone will have more than enough storage to store all you're films, which you can watch on the crystal clear 3.5" screen (same size as the iPhone) or your music (through the in-built standard 3.5mm headphone jack which also outputs video to your TV!)

Onto the bad, this phone does not run the likes of Windows Mobile. From what I can tell, this runs Symbian. Now, that isn't always a bad thing, but running an near identical version to the cheaper and less sophisticated 5800 isn't a good thing. Lacking vital things such as Word Mobile or Outlook this phone, to me, will struggle to take off in the corporate market, but, will strive in the ease-of-use everyday user market, making this the perfect phone for anyone wanting fast internet access (Including WiFi), access to all their media library's a stylish phone, and a good and usable camera. The 5.0MP camera more than pulls its weight, and whilst lacking compared to 8.0MP alternatives such as the Renoir is vastly made up by the other benefits of this mobile 'everything' device.

I'm going on a bit here so I'll make some thin points.
This phone is good for;
-Excellent video and photography on the go
-Carrying and watching vast amounts of different media
-Writing long documents and short
-GPS (Yes it really works - although, most carriers charge, and its expensive. Beware!)
-Basic to advanced communications, from phoning to MMS.

Sorry if I went on a bit, however, I like to be detailed and give good advice to any potential N97ers out there.

If you found this helpful, please state so, it'll help me keep my Number 1 spot.

Cheers. - TheKingOfHearts

I bought this a couple of days ago and I think it is amazing, it has everything you could need in a phone. To start off with I think the battery life is very good compared to my previous phone (HTC Tytn II). It has alot of useful applications such as Nokia maps and Nokia messenger, which allows you to set up your emails on you mobile.

It has a huge 32gb memory which is enough for all of your mp3 collection. I have even put a few MP4 movies on mine and the playback is great on the large screen it has. It also has Real media player so you can put RMVB files directly on to it.

The camera quality is pretty good, I don't use the camera too often on my mobile phone so it's not really a feature of the phone that I would find very useful.

It has a very good web browser that allows you to browse full pages which my HTC didn't let me do. You can even access bbc iplayer and catch up on missed shows etc. It also has a face book application on the phone that I have not yet tried so I cant really comment much on that.

This is a very good phone and I would definately recommend it. If I was looking to buy a phone right now, I would definately go for this over the iphone.

Having had my N97 handset for a few weeks now, I've learned to live with a few idiosyncrasies. Perhaps I shouldn't start this review on a negative note, but whilst most reviews I've seen here are positive, they should be tempered with a little more realism and a little less rose-tinted adoration.

Firstly, the N97 is no iPhone killer. The N97 will never match the iPhone for: -

Graphics.
Audio quality.
Responsiveness.

Graphics are an issue because the iPhone (and ipod Touch) have a huge gaming community. Something the N97 cannot even come close to. Whilst there are mutterings of compatability with N-Gage, the N97 lacks a graphic processing chip, meaning no real 3D. What 3D there is will be very slow and low-quality.

Audio quality from the built-in stereo speakers is abysmally tinny. Worse than the N95 (my previous handset). Headphones (and my amp, which I'm currently plugged into) reveal an excellent lack of hiss and interference (something the N95 failed miserably at), even at low volumes but top-end frequency response is dire. The overall auditory experience is similar to having cotton wool in your ears.

Responsiveness... The N97 runs a treacle-like variant of the Symbian S60 operating system. Those who remember the snappiness of older handsets, such as the brilliant nk702, will be left utterly frustrated by the speed at which the N97 responds to touching icons.

My last gripe: There is a photo browser and a video browser. The photo browser browses photos... and videos. It allows transfer (via bluetooth, MMS, email...) of photo and video. The video browser, however, browses only video and does *not* allow transfers. Confusing and non-intuitive. Bad, bad Nokia!

Onward to more positive things though. The touch screen is joyous to use! Just quickly; there are two types of touchscreen available to manufacturers such as Nokia and Apple: resistive and capacitive. Without going into detail, the second type is regarded as 'best' because they are generally more sensitive and permit better-looking screens. Nokia went with the other one.

Now, the advantage of Nokia's screen is you can use just about anything to touch the screen. With the capacitive (which Apple uses), you have to use your finger (essentially anything which will conduct electricity will work). What this means is; you can wear gloves and still use the N97. Better still, the screen is very sensitive and still looks excellent!

More on the touch input. Typing is accomplished either on the slide-out QWERTY keyboard (which is poor for texting, but might be OK for emailing) or by using the on-screen keyboard. The on-screen keyboard is *not* QWERTY, nor can you change any setting to make it so. It's the standard 3x4 grid we're used to texting with on touch-less handsets. Mind you; texting is very fluid and I have no problems with accuracy. The T9 predictive text needs tweaking, but I can live with its weirdness for now.

One option I've not seen mentioned in reviews is the ability to have the phone read texts to you. Yes, it's strange and possibly unique, but the N97 has a configurable speech synthesiser which will read your texts (even recognising and announcing smileys!). Possibly useful for road-warriors?

Music, photo and other file management tasks are well handled. The Ovi suite for your PC is a great accompaniment and works surprisingly well (much better than the old PC Suite). Mac users will be somewhat unsurprised to learn that software support is very limited. Nokia has a poor track-record with Mac support.

An overall excellent handset aimed not at the iPhone market, but the more traditional N-series market (business and pro-sumer). 4 out of 5.

now on my second N97. very buggy, even after firmware updates. also known issue scratched lens. Cause by lens cover. also outdated hardware cpu 434 MHz 128mb is the same as 5800 nokia. 32GB of storage just seems wasted on this phone.The Resistive touchscreen is inaccurate. and sound quality on head phone is poor. its such a shame as i am (was) a big nokia fan.

I dont have a lot to say about this phone, so i will keep it brief.

For those of you who want a phone with no problems, this isn't for you. Here are the problems i experienced while ihaving the n97 for 3 weeks brand new...

-Constant freezing, and having to take the battery out for the phone to restart...

-Assigning a ringtone, to then be embarresed by the default nokia ringtone overriding your selection...

-Email not configuring properly and constantly having to delete and set up your account...

-The nokia music manager is terrible, and i found it confusing with what data i had put on the phone...

To counter all of these problems you will have to take your phone to a mobile repair centre and get it updated, which i personally didnt have the time or patience for.

Hope you take all of this into account before purchasing. Thanks for reading.